As an introduction to this blog I want to share my first steps with Zero Day.
While I was attached to computer science and cyber security quite early in my life and turned out to be quite talented with it, I started my career a few years back and had the luck to gain a lot of deep insights from highly skilled software engineers at Intel Corporation. After spending some time there I moved to Daimler TSS to become an automotive security expert. And yes, I am referencing those companies here to have some external links which is good for google visibility, but also because both of them have been so great employers to me! In each of them I have had the luck to have team leads so much interested in supporting my personal and professional development, that it is only fair to say big ‘thank you’, as besides personal circumstances and conditions (motivation, skills, talent) the lead supervising a junior, has so much influence on the further carreer path. (At least for me that was the case).
At a later stage then I started to travel and exploring the world. I started to gain interest in nature and the great magnitude of diversity existing on this planet and I started to see the same digitalization I am driving forward with my work as a quite critical threat to humanity, as I noticed the humanity moving away more and more from their natural self. Escaping from the real world into virtual rialities while a hand full of people of tech leaders are the winners of the whole process with a new-won power allowing them to influence and even control mature parts of the worlds economical system and individuums.
(I know that this is a statement, which I right now cannot proof through meaningful and water-proof quotes. Maybe I will write a whole post about this topic and how I come to the conclusions. For those interested right now, I propose watching the movies “The social Dilemma” and less known but as important “The Great Hack”. Great journalistic research has been done for those and the authors explain the complex interconnections in a very understandable way.)
For keeping this short: I suddently had a problem with the work I am doing and could not relate it to my moralic compass or my newly discovered nature-loving – almost would call it ‘hippie-self’ – anymore. 2020 I decided to quit my job and leave the society I have been locked into for so long.
As always when one makes plans in life, different things happened and I have been presented with lots and lots of options and circumstances in the
following months. As I am fully trusting in a flow of life and right things coming at right time, I was pushed more and more in direction of founding a company, without even knowing a reason for it. The last straw which broke the camel back (really dont appreciate that saying as a vegetarian, but this is what google presented as the translation for the german saying I wanted to use) was seriously a golden ace playing card, I found on a roof top while doing parkour. This was when the hippie-me knew that for some reason it was time to go into capitalism.
Without big idea of what I was doing, within the following year I found a company. First with some support of my uncle’s company. Therefore this is maybe the time to give credits to my uncle in person as well as the WIR GmbH, which highly supported the idea and initial vision of the Zero Day Project. Without this catalyser I may not have been doing what I did and I may now sit in a tend on an island, trying to catch a fish. Happy – yes, but for sure with much less possibilities to return something to this planet and without this great vision enriching and motivating my current life. Anyhow, quite early, it tunred out that I am not ready to turn into that crazy form of capitalist, which I was expected to be. Maybe I will never be ready for it and therefore Zero Day turned into its own GmbH, independent from WIR GmbH and fully led by myself.
The start of Zero Day went very smooth. Some recommendations from the enterprise of my previous employer, achieved through my motivation, commitment and talent, helped me and Zero Day to get involved into key projects of leading german automotive OEMs and spcifically into securing the next generation infotainment systems. There will be a separate post about Zero Days projects, but in a nutshell within the first year we
- Supported the technical device bring-up and implementation of an ECU wide Key-Provisioning concept through coordinating efforts of our customer, their enterprise and four different suppliers.
- Design and Implementation of an automated code signing infrastructure for the infotainment firmware
- General system hardening and security engineering projects
Quite fast I had the need to look out for further support and had the luck of hiring Amir as the first security engineer. Again, I was lucky in life to find this highly talented and motivated engineer so quickly. Throughout the following year we grew to a team of 4 engineers delivering best quality possible, being happy to have such an amazing start within key projects of the automotive industry and even more promizing projects in different fields in sight for the upcoming year 2023.
While devivering full motivation and engagement for my projects and employees and getting great feedback from customers as well as calculation sheets, my inner compass and self still was raising protest against my new path. I don’t need much money for myself. I see the digitalization as a critical part within world’s evolution. I love the nature more than the digitalization as it is mis-used in our modern world. Dificult baseline for living periods of 16 working hours per day. But again, it was just a question of some patience for life to show me the path.
While traveling through Tanzania I had some intense experiences and encounters which strengthened my awareness about the luck of creating a life out of the great circumstances I have been born in. Additionally I learned how comparatively less is needed in order to substancially change the whole life of a person / family / town in another continent (again, this could be an article or more likely multiple articles on its own). Anyhow, the result of my journey was a new vision:
While Cyber Security is a profitable branch at the time being, I now knew that I want to instrument those circumstances, to re-invest mature parts of my profit into projects helping humans in less privileged parts of the world escaping the rabbit hole they have been born into and giving them a fair chance to make up a life where the requirement of having enough food for the evening is not the main motivation of starting a day.
Suddently I knew what my talent, Zero Day GmbH and all the luck I was granted with on my path would be good for and I could seriously identify with the things I have been doing. 16 hour work marathons, bug fixing, project chaos and administration overhead turned into 16 hours of pushing my vision and suddently made me feel happy. Being part of capitalism in order to at least break a bit through the long established world order seemed fair. Having the chance to focus on IT Sec projects, which I love, while knowing, the goal is at least some change, in best case big changes in some people’s lifes, makes me happy.
I was lucky to have colleagues with quite a similar view on life, which resulted in them sharing and appreciating my vision, which allowed my vision to grow to Zero Day’s vision. And at this point it is for sure the time to also thank my colleagues for all the trust they continously put in me, Zero Days future, projects and vision.
And here we go. Next post will capture our vision and ideas, followed by posts about efforts we do in regards of our projects as well and the vision itself.
By the way: We are still looking for further support. So if you felt some interest in Zero Day raising while reading, please check-out our job postings and get in touch 🙂
— @author: Martin Pressl, CEO